Monday, December 15, 2008

Santa Run

We did one of those Santa Runs. You know, for kids. You sign up. You pay some money. You con your co-workers into also paying some money. You get issued a Santa suit. You run around town in the Santa suit. You give your money to charity.

Except that they ran out of Santa suits. So your correspondent ran around in a Santa hat only. Well, that is, his normal running clothes, plus a Santa hat. It was less festive. But the sun was out for the first day in weeks. And the kids still got their money.

Your correspondent also ran the grueling course through Old Riga -- including quick stops to snap a few pictures of the other Santas (the staff photographer was unavailable)-- faster than the two strapping young members of the United States Marine Corps who participated. I won't mention their names because think they could get dishonorably discharged for letting a State Department bureaucrat beat them in a test of physical fitness, even if it's more about silly costumes than strength and stamina.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Denmark failed to achieve a new world record for number of Santas participating in a Santa run...the news reported that Liverpool still holds the record. Looks like there were plenty of participants in Riga!Mom

Guatemala? Rio de Janeiro? Huh?

This journal once chronicled the experience of a low-level American diplomat living in Guatemala. Then he went to Latvia, and Afghanistan, and then back "home" to Washington, DC for a bit. He is now serving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If you are one of the few people of no blood relation to the authors who has come here in search of Guatemalan content, here are a few choices from the archives that we like:

In Afghanistan, the photographic opportunities were often limited to what we could sneak with a point-and-shoot camera out the bulletproof window of a speeding SUV. But sometimes we got out and about. A few favorites from that tour:

We've also vacationed aggressively in each region we've been posted in, and taken some epic home leave trips, usually leading to better photos than those where we were posted. Those photos are included in the blog, but somehow holiday snaps seem beneath this sidebar.